At Home In The Woods

[Obed]

Today I put a second low voltage box in the MBR as an alternate location for phone/computer. I also re-ran the Cat 6 cables going to the front porch and the back porch because we changed the location of the network patch panel.

We finally decided on a location for the low voltage patch panel. In our foyer area, we have 2 closets right beside each other. I'm not really sure why the wife designed 2 closets in the foyer but that is coming in handy. One closet will be a coat closet. The other closet is partially filled with a H&A return duct. We are going to put the patch panel in this closet which I am calling the vacuum cleaner closet.

I was originally thinking I would put the patch panel in the office/DR closet or in the basement below that closet so the porch cables ran to that area instead. To re-run the wires, I had to totally re-run the back porch wires because the length of the cables would not have made it to the new network closet. The wire run for the front porch was a little easier to redo.

I'm still trying to figure out a good way to bring my Cat 6 cables from the floor and ceiling trusses into the network closet. You can see a hole in the back left corner of the closet that we have cut for running the wires through the floor. I may have 40+ wires coming through the floor. The wife doesn't like having an open hole in our floor. The electrician suggested enclosing the hole in the floor with a "boot" used to run a vent pipe through a roof. I'm just trying to figure out how to prep this area before drywall and sheetrook.

If any of you guys could post some pictures of your security panels and Cat5/6 network panels, I'd appreciate seeing them to get some ideas.

I have renamed the closet from "vacuum cleaner closet" to "network closet". You see, as soon as the wife suggested we put the patch panel in this closet instead of the DR closet, this closet became MINE; the wife just doesn't know it yet. Yes, I will have to share this closet with the vacuum cleaner. But calling it the "network closet" makes it sound like mine.

 

[Obed]

Today I put some spray foam around the gas pipe that exits the house underneath the back porch.

 

[Obed]

Obed,
The brick looks a lot better than the house wrap

Seriously, it's amazing how much the brick changes the visual character of your house. You must be lovin' it.
Dave.

Thanks Dave. Yes, I'm loving seeing the brick go up. And I like the brick mason. He has told us more than once, "I'll do it however you want it." And he's delivered on the promise as much as it's in his ability.

I'm also glad we like the look of the brick on the house. It would be a bummer to not like the looks of the brick after it goes on. I would imagine that sometimes happens.

Obed

 

[Obed]

Obed, from what I have been able to see from the photo's your masons seem to be doing a great job in a timely way. Depending on weather they can be a slow down point in the process. We normally have some of the inside trades working at the same time. Do you have anything else going on right now?

MarkV

Not much. We did have the security guy here this week. Also the electrician came and finished some small stuff. The wife has been meeting with insulation, siding, drywall, and stone subs. Some of that work should start fairly soon. There was some stuff we needed to finish before insulation work begins

Obed

 

[Obed]

Obed - I see by your pics that the mason figured out how to install the scafolding around the porch roof w/o taking it down. I figured it wouldn't be a big deal once they put their minds to it.

Brick work looks good - I'm jealous.

PAGUY

PAGUY,
We did have the framer beef up the temporary porch roof supports per the mason's request. If you look close, some of the scaffolding is sitting on top of the porch roof.

Obed

 

[Obed]

The electrician left 1/2 a spool of copper wire on site for a month! In this day and age I am not sure what he was thinking.

MarkV

Yeah, that's about like leaving dollar bills lying around.

 

[Obed]

That was my thought too. Second thought was how does he know? He would have to take notes for each job site or something to be sure, or he's well under 50 :laughing:
Dave.

Actually, it was the electrician's worker who left the spool and told us about its being missing.

 

[eepete]

Here are some pictures of the night lights that go into standard single gang boxes. Having the in the hall might be good for using the vacuum cleaner- no worry about where furniture is in the room. These are LED lights, so hopefully they will have decent life to them. I got them at Lowes. They turn off it it's bright enough, but some of our have been on all the time since they are in low light areas.

We put two out in the hall (opposite sides) that goes from the MBR to Master Bath. Master bath has two, the one you see in the photo and another.

I posted my wiring "closet" a while back, realize you're not quite that size. I still like a 4x4 sheet of plywood (or for that closet, the full width of the rear and half the height).
Don't forget conduit to basement and next floor from this area.

If all you had walk off was the wire, you're doing great. I had someone try to hotwire my B21 TLB and they fried part of the wiring harness. That's as bad as stealing someones horse in the old west.

One last comment (and clarification as to why I hate most plumbers ("most" because seems like jenkinsph is OK)):
If you look at the picture of the toilet, you can see the line from the wall to the tank. I commented that it was too bad they don't make tanks with inputs on both sides. Plumbers says "Yeah, they do, I just always built and order on the left side so I don't have to keep track of how many of each type I need". So in some bathrooms, I get to look at the plumber that could have been hidden just so this overpaid clown doesn't have to think . There's more to that story, but, the thing to keep in mind is any finished project has flaws. Perfection never finishes. Most plumbers are idiots. The two houses before this plumbers were the biggest problem. If there are any other good plumbers out there, I apologize and be sure to point out to prospective clients why you're not an idiot. Our bathrooms are very plain because we couldn't bear to do anything fancy give the plumber track record.

Pete

 

[Obed]

Hey Obed,

Brick work looks real good! Hey i'm curoius about how the brick was laid behind the porch roof. Would love to see a couple of pictures, if you have a chance.

Thanks Rick

We had lots of discussions with many people about how to connect the basement back porch to the house and negotiate the brick. Here's how we did it.

We put ledger boards about 6" from the framed walls, with spacers between the ledger board and the wall. The brick guy just put brick behind existing ledger boards and around the spacer boards.

Before:

After:

Obed

 

[Obed]

Friday we found out we were missing 3 long steel lintels that support the brick over the living room quad-windows and over the main floor garage doors. Although we had ordered the lintels, they were not part of the original brick delivery because the lintels were out of stock. The undelivered lintels fell through the cracks; the brick supply company forgot about them and we had not done a good inventory when the brick supplies were delivered. Lesson learned. Unfortunately, we can't get the lintels delivered until Thursday.

So the brick workers started working on retaining walls today. My wife went out to make sure that they use brick ties to tie the bricks to the poured concrete retaining wall. They normally use ties about every 7 or 8 courses of brick and were almost to the point where the first ties would be needed. So my wife just stood around and waited to watch them attach the ties to the concrete wall. Well, they couldn't drive the nails into the wall. The nails would bend or the concrete wall would just chip. So they tried to see if my wife would let them brick the retaining wall with out ties since that wall is only 6 feet tall. When the wife called me to ask, I told her that we wanted brick ties and that the brick workers needed to figure out how to attach the ties to the wall. The brick mason was not there but he has a nail gun that can shoot the nails into the wall. So the brick work stopped and will have to resume tomorrow when they have the nail gun. My wife strongly suspects that if she hadn't gone out there, that they would have bricked the retaining wall without using any brick ties.

If there is anybody reading this thread that will be building a house, please understand that if you do not personally supervise/inspect the work, corners will almost certainly get cut. The subcontractor boss (brick, electrician, framer, etc.) is commonly not onsite and the workers will cut corners when things are inconvenient. For example, when our house was being roofed, I was watching the workers working on a valley. I couldn't see the ice & water shield in the valley where they were working so I climbed up on the roof to check on it. Sure enough, there was no ice & water shield. When I asked the lead roofer about it, he said that they had run out of ice & water shield. I told him they had to stop work until they got some more ice & water shield. Thus, they had to leave and come back the next day. I'm certain that if I hadn't been there, the last two valleys on our roof would not have gotten ice and water shield installed on them.

The things you have to be most careful about are the things that get covered up before you get a chance to look at them. The workers know that if they can cover the area before you can see the work, they can hide any kind of substandard work they want from you and the boss. They understand that you will never discover the issue until much later when something leaks, breaks, or doesn't work - and they will be long gone by that time. I told the original construction manager (who is no longer working on this project) that I was to inspect everything before it got covered. He despised me for that requirement and resisted me on that point the entire time he was on the job. Only people who don't do quality work have anything to fear from having their work inspected.

Obed